Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced that a Cleveland man scheduled to be released from prison this week will now remain in custody after DNA testing conducted as part of Attorney General DeWine's Sexual Assault Kit (SAK) Testing Initiative linked him to the rapes of four adults and one teenager in the 1990s.

A Cuyahoga County Grand Jury last week indicted Dwayne Wilson, 54, on nine counts of rape and five counts of kidnapping in connection with the assaults of five women in Cleveland in 1994, 1995, 1996, and 1997.

Wilson had been scheduled to be released from prison on Friday after serving a five-year prison sentence on a separate sexual assault conviction.

"This case highlights exactly why I felt that we owed it to Ohioans to test the thousands of previously untested rape kits in police evidence rooms across the state," said Attorney General DeWine. "Not only are attackers being held accountable, but this initiative is also preventing future attacks. Had these kits not been tested, this defendant would have been released from prison and given the opportunity to attack again. Now he's looking at spending the rest of his life behind bars."

In all five cases, investigators found that Wilson pulled up to the women in his vehicle and sexually assaulted them at either knifepoint or gunpoint. The victims ranged in age from 16 to 34 at the time of the attacks.

The case was investigated by agents with the Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) working as part of the DNA Cold Case Task Force operated by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty's office.

“We have learned that serial offenders like Wilson simply will not stop committing sexual assaults,” said Cuyahoga County Assistant Prosecutor Rick Bell, who heads the Special Investigations Division of Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office and its DNA Cold Case Task Force. “By pursuing these indictments and keeping Wilson behind bars, we can not only obtain justice for these five victims, we can ensure that no other women will have to suffer at the hands of this vile cretin.”

As of October 1, 2014, BCI forensic scientists have tested 5,023 rape kits as part of Attorney General DeWine's SAK Testing Initiative. The DNA testing has resulted in 1,861 hits to DNA already in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).

Attorney General DeWine launched the initiative after learning that dozens of law enforcement agencies across the state were in possession of rape kits, some of which were decades old, that had never been sent to a DNA lab for testing. Attorney General DeWine then made an open call to law enforcement to send their kits to BCI for DNA testing free of charge.

In Cuyahoga County alone, those with the county prosecutor's office report that more than 200 people have been indicted following testing conducted as part of the SAK Testing Initiative.

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